2. Exclusive Research

This is pretty much the only way for any media company to stand out, to either be exclusive or be the first one to break a story.

Your Lesson: Since you can’t manufacture “breaking news” from scratch, focus on creating something exclusive instead. Think about how you want to present your pitch to the journalist. Feel free to refer to some of these email pitch angles for inspiration.

Also, note the “Trending Now” section on Buzzsumo to see what’s popular right now.

You can also find popular content by searching Reddit and Ahrefs’ Content Explorer.

Once you’ve done the above, you should have a broad list of content ideas. You can fine-tune them further in later steps.

Before you go further, analyze your own content creation capabilities. If you don’t have access to in-house or freelance design talent, don’t prioritize infographics or visual assets. Similarly, if you can’t create videos, don’t make videos a big part of your content strategy.

Lastly, avoid overused content formats and terms like “infographics” (use “visual asset” instead). Journalists are often inundated with “infographic” requests and send such emails straight to the trash can.

Creating Content that Hook Journalists

This entails more than just researching a topic and writing/designing it. To create something that actually gets journalists excited, you have to understand two things:

Storytelling

Emotions

Let’s look at both of these below.

Storytelling in Content

When you’re creating content for a campaign, you have to think of the story of your readers and customers.

For example, suppose you run a site that sells flight tickets. All your customers have a reason to buy tickets from you: to meet old friends, to travel for a vacation, to be with their families.

This reasonwhy tells you the story of your customers, a story that your business makes possible.

A storytelling-focused content campaign would incorporate elements of this why into the content. Essentially, you’re looking to create a personal connection with readers, a way for them to look at your content and think, “That’s my story.”

How can you do this?

Here are a few simple tips:

Address a problem your customers face. For example, Sugru’s “Home Hacks” has solutions for common problems its users face.

Emotions in Content

Most of these stories focus on a strong emotion—a big family adventure, a lofty high school dream, etc. It strongly emphasizes that Tesla isn’t just a car; it is an emotional experience.

Here’s another example of emotive storytelling from British Airways. Instead of focusing on its features (better seats, cheaper tickets, on-time arrivals), British Airways emphasizes the emotions involved in traveling.

According to research, these are the emotions you should target if you want your story to go viral:

You can see examples of this in every form of advertising and content marketing. Nike’s ads usually evoke awe, while Coca-Cola’s ads show joy and laughter.

Think long and hard about the product you’re selling. What emotion does buying the product generate in your customers? If it’s a productivity app, what emotional benefit can customers get from your product (e.g., enjoying more time for family)? If it’s a fitness product, what will being more fit get you (e.g., more energy, a feeling of accomplishment, etc.)?

Try to relate this in the form of a story and you’ll see much better results from your content marketing and PR efforts.

Format the Content for Maximum Impact

If your content is a large block of text, has poor visuals, or uses complicated language, you’ll struggle to find readers.

Follow these rules:

Keep paragraph length short: 2-3 sentences at most per paragraph.

Use short sentences.

Write at a grade 5-7 reading level. Check your reading level with a tool like Readable.io.

Use plenty of bullet points and sub-headers.

I also recommend using a “bucket brigade” at the beginning of your content. This is a copywriting technique where you use words like “look,” “here,” and others before a sentence. These words grab the reader’s attention, which is why they’re particularly useful at the beginning of an article.

Influencers with a large audience due to their blog, social media, or email reach

You can’t possibly build relationships with everyone in your niche. Since your resources are limited, you have to be strategic about target selection.

When building my target list, I look for three things:

They should cover my industry, expertise, or product-type.

They should have either a large audience of their own or access to a large audience through their network.

They should be approachable and have as few gatekeepers as possible.

These criteria disqualify a lot of targets. Major influencers like Tim Ferriss, for instance, often have far too many gatekeepers to be approachable. Some journalists have a large reach but cover highly specialized subjects.

So how do you find these targets and build relationships with them?

Let’s take a look.

Finding Targets

Broadly speaking, there are two ways to find journalists, influencers, and bloggers:

If you were creating content similar to this, these would be ideal targets. If they’ve covered something similar in the past (and it has earned them traffic), they might be interested in your content too.

Note the name of the journalist who wrote the story and add them to your outreach list.

2. Find people who cover your area or “beat.”

Journalists usually specialize in a specific topic. This is called their “beat.”

Beats can be as narrow or as broad as per the publication’s requirements. A small local newspaper might have a single guy covering “technology,” while a large tech publication might have different people covering “Android apps” and “iPhone apps.”

Most large publications list their writers and editors for each beat clearly. The Huffington Post’s about page, for instance, lists all their editors and their beats:

Finding Email Addresses

Once you have a list of journalists’ names, it’s time to find their email addresses.

Thankfully, this process has become much easier than it used to be. Tools like InterSeller, AnyMailFinder.com, or Hunter.io (which is not the best in terms of quality but is a good fall back) can find nearly anyone email’s address within seconds.

They work by finding the email pattern associated with a domain name (such as {firstname}{lastname}@domain.com). Once they know the pattern, they can easily guess a specific person’s email with a relatively high degree of accuracy—at least for smaller organizations.

For example, here’s what I see when I look up HubSpot.com on Hunter.io:

Building Relationships

Journalists are inundated with emails. According to a survey by Fractl, nearly 20% of journalists get over 50 pitches per day. A few top ones get as many as 100+ pitches a day.

Who do you think journalists are going to notice in their inboxes, random pitch #49 or someone they’ve exchanged emails with five times before?

The latter, of course.

Here’s a process I use to build relationships and make myself visible:

Follow, retweet, and reply on a public platform (like Twitter).

Follow with a couple of comments on their blog.

Send 1-2 emails without any “ask,” such as an email where I leave a genuine compliment, feedback, or start a dialog.

The golden rule you absolutely must follow is to “give before you take.” Offer something of genuine value to your target, such as a compliment (as long as it’s 100% authentic), a link to an article they might be interested in, an introduction to someone they’d enjoy meeting, or a solution to their problem.

Don’t think too much about “what’s in it for me?” Instead, focus on helping your target journalists and making yourself visible.

Turn this relationship outreach into an ongoing process. Set aside some time each day to send and respond to emails. And do this well ahead of the time when you think you’ll need something from them.

You’ll find that, if you can do this consistently, you’ll build strong relationships. These relationships, in turn, can open up new opportunities.

Pitching Journalists

The final step is to send out pitches to your target journalists. Here are some tips for doing it right:

1. Align the pitch with the writer’s beat.

The number one rule of pitching: send the right pitch to the right writer.

Journalists usually have a very narrow area of focus. Sending them something outside their beat just shows you haven’t bothered to research them at all.

My tip is to shadow top targets on your list for a few days on social media (especially Twitter since it’s journalists’ platform of choice). See what kind of topics they tweet about. This should give you a quick understanding of their interests.

Research their published articles as well. See if you notice a pattern: what topics, content formats, etc. do they write about?

This is an important step that will radically improve your outreach success.

2. Make sure you have a brand before you pitch.

This is one of the essentials for any successful PR campaign. Respectable outlets won’t publish you if you don’t have a brand or any claims to legitimacy.

What makes a brand?

That’s a broad question, but at the very least, you should have the following:

Over to You

Getting press can seem impossibly hard if you’re a solo blogger, author, or course creator, but it’s doable. The important part is to think from the perspective of your target audience—journalists, influencers, and bloggers—and create something they’ll want to publish.

Even more importantly, invest in building relationships with journalists and influencers. Focus on giving before taking in these relationships. Once you get on their radar, you’ll find that journalists are much more likely to listen to your pitches.

If you follow the process I’ve outlined above, you’ll find it easy to get press. Yes, even if you’re a nobody!

If you or your business could get coverage in any media outlet, which one would it be? What can you do today to get you closer to that dream?

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About Dmitry Dragilev

Two years ago Dmitry single-handedly grew a startup from zero to 40 million page views through SEO/PR outreach and got acquired by Google. Now he has translated his know-how into PRThatConverts PR and content marketing coaching program and JustReachOut a software platform used by more than 4,000 small businesses and professionals to pitch relevant journalists and get press coverage without the help of PR firms. In his spare time he blogs at CriminallyProlific.

2 thoughts on “How to Get Free Press for Your Business (Even if You’re a Nobody)”

Simply loved what you wrote. The best part was the sample email which I had been looking for since last 1 month. I’ve been into Digital Marketing but recently had realised how incomplete it is without PR and Outreach marketing. Thank you so much Dmitry for this awesome blog post.

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